Two old friends. Two new friends. One BIG adventure! Hegel and Hobbes have very different philosophies about life as they set out on a wondrous journey that will introduce them to new companions and teach them valuable lessons about teamwork, creativity, and the importance of keeping a positive outlook on life. Learn how high you can climb and how far you can go if you have faith in yourself and the help of a few really good friends.

Here’s a link to Sarah Drake’s site:

https://sarahscuriouscreations.com/

From the author of Sistina, Alone in the Light, and World Hunger

The Book of Names is Brian Kenneth Swain’s first collection of short fiction. The stories, characters, and themes explored in this work are as universal as they are diverse: bravery, greed, legacy, and a serious infatuation with horses and French horns. In the title story, one soldier turns hopelessness into a moment of grandeur and sacrifice. In “The Antique Shop,” the proprietor and his customer marvel at the absurdity of debating the provenance and value of a book that cannot possibly exist, despite it being there in the shop with them. And in “Convergence,” two Middle Eastern men share a drink and speak of the inestimable loss each has suffered in a recent terrorist attack, and the terrible secret that binds them together. Swain dissects with candor and immediacy the emotions and motivations of his characters, whether in response to dowsing a well, opening a hamburger shop, working to thwart child abusers, talking a friend off a ledge, or shopping for one’s own casket. The people are instantly recognizable, the fears and joys are boundless, and the language is imbued with empathy, honesty, and humor. The inhabitants of The Book of Names are your neighbors, your friends, your family, possibly even yourself.

Seasoned writer and poet Brian Kenneth Swain knows that some seeds take longer to germinate than others.

After entering a new phase of life several years ago, Swain began writing free verse that not only explored the meaning in real-life experiences, but also in the wacky and unorthodox. Swain shares truths he has stumbled upon during a unique journey from yesterday to now. In his third compilation of poetry, Swain reflects on a wide range of topics that include nature’s beauty and creatures, a confusing SAT question, the day in the life of a stone mason, the sweetness of watermelon pickles, and the morning after a party, hoping his verse ultimately sparks a younger generation to enthusiastically embrace imagery, inspiration, and lyricism. Chicken Feet shares a compilation of free verse by a seasoned poet whose observations elegantly reflect on the ever-changing world around him.

Sistina, Brian Kenneth Swain’s gripping and thought-provoking new novel, is a story two thousand years in the making.

The events set in motion following Christ’s crucifixion build to a crescendo during the Italian High Renaissance and will test the faith of the story’s historical and modern-day characters, as well as that of readers.

When a violent earthquake damages Michelangelo’s magnificent frescoes, a team of experts undertakes the Vatican’s most important restoration in centuries, only to discover a perplexing secret hidden for five hundred years beneath the chapel’s plaster ceiling. The message, both cryptic and incomplete due to the rash actions of a tourist at the time of the quake, baffles the team and awakens the attention of a small group of powerful men—men who have waited centuries in the shadows, hoping for the elusive clue that will lead them to Christendom’s ultimate artifact.

It is a tale of murder, revenge, ecclesiastical connivance, and ancient secrets—all constructed on an elaborate foundation of religious history, political intrigue, and technological wizardry. Sistina, Swain’s most controversial novel to date, will leave you breathless.

The Curious Habits of Man shares an amusing glimpse at life as one man contemplates many of our greatest-and smallest-questions.

What is the one true secret to weight loss? What is the correct way to make a grilled cheese sandwich? Is the designated hitter rule the salvation of baseball or its undoing? Is it rational to be an optimist? And-the question that haunts us all- should toilet paper unwind over the top of the roll or from underneath?

In his first collection of essays, author Brian Kenneth Swain tackles hundreds of life’s questions while exploring a vast array of subjects-from tubas to two year-olds, from field goals to child labor laws, and from high school shop class to the worst round of golf ever played. With an acerbic wit and an honest approach, Swain shares his perspective on such pivotal matters as how to ski without losing a limb or your self-esteem, how to correctly prepare and consume lobster according to Maine standards, and whether marketing ploys hypnotically convince consumers to replace perfectly functioning items without a second thought. Swain encourages a kind of tongue-in-cheek thinking that prompts us to take a second look at the world around us.

In Chechnya, a terrible mistake costs a
brilliant young engineer his family.

In Istanbul, an oil tanker on its maiden voyage sinks for no apparent reason.

In Moscow, an astonishing new weapon threatens to upset the balance of world power.

And in Sochi, a cutting-edge energy facility opens for business.

Movlady Saidov is a young man struggling to navigate a tightrope between rage and love, embroiled in a complex web of conspiracy only partly of his own making. His story is fiction, but the technology, the politics, and the tension are as real as the headlines of yesterday’s newspaper. This is Swain’s most compelling thriller yet, drawing together the seemingly unrelated worlds of cryogenic fuel technology and directed energy weaponry and placing them at the center of a highstakes game of global geopolitics. It will keep you guessing. It will keep you thinking. It will keep you engrossed until the final climactic moments.

THEY SAY “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT”…

Using facts straight from today’s headlines, Brian Kenneth Swain, author of World Hunger, takes a fictional but frightening “what-if” look at the genetically modified foods currently being grown and consumed around the world.

Looking through the eyes of the three major players: the corporate giants that control the purse strings, the scientists who are trying to play by the rules of ethics, and the environmentalists who vehemently oppose this exploitation of nature, Swain tells a gripping story of exploitation versus assistance.

He says, “The concept behind World Hunger centers on the most controversial option for feeding the world’s hungry. Do those facing starvation embrace genetically modified foods and take a chance on unknown long-term risks? Or do they play it safe, avoid genetically modified foods and risk starvation? I’m convinced many would rather eat now and worry about ‘later’… later.”

But, he adds, that still doesn’t negate the responsibility of large corporations who, in their pursuit of profit, rush in to market with hastily developed products. Swain will engage your imagination while challenging your thinking about:

• Whether big business should be allowed to “own” plant species created by nature such as corn and rice that have been planted by farmers for centuries.
• The ethical trade-off between companies making a profit by feeding people who have nothing
• Weighing the ethics of actions against the need for a livelihood

World Hunger is a fast-paced thought-provoking exploration of the biotech industry and its impacts on the foods we eat every day.

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My America is a poem that examines the full range of human experience and emotion in the context of everyday places and images. From urban to rural, from the coasts to the plains, the stories are of ordinary people, their loves, their fears, and their dreams. It is “Winesburg, Ohio,” “Leaves of Grass” and “On the Road”, rolled up in one audacious and unforgettable journey.

The project came about in 2005. As Hurricane Rita approached Houston, Texas, residents were ordered to evacuate. I spent a week driving across the southeast, and, having no particular destination, took the opportunity to visit many small towns one would normally never encounter if one stuck to the major highways. From each town that I visited I came away with stories and observations that leant themselves nicely to the compact descriptive images that populate the poem. When I got home a week later, I was happy to discover not only that Rita had spared Houston entirely, but that I had about twenty stanzas of the poem that would become My America once I had developed additional images and stories from around the rest of the country. Having visited every state in the country at one time or another, it proved an enlightening and energizing exercise to imagine what extending that southeastern drive would have been like had I done it from one end of America to the other.

Every state is represented in the poem, and the quotes that begin each section are from writers who were born in each particular area of the country, including a few that run counter to common knowledge, Robert Frost for example having been born in California, though he is widely associated with New England,. The project was great fun and I strongly suspect this will not be the final edition of My America.

For a sample reading from My America by the author, click below:

Secret Places by Brian Kenneth Swain is worth a look.  This is a competent, well-balanced collection of free verse narrative poems that engage the reader in the author’s reflections on love, war, friendship, family, death and even Leonardo Da Vinci.

“To An Old Friend Across the Ocean” is a fine example of the “epistolary” (letter) poem, written in this case to a dead friend. The poet discloses that he has written several letters to his friend in the past that have gone unanswered, until one day he finds an envelope from your address/ but with my name/ written in an unfamiliar hand. He discovers that the letter is from The one who lived with you./ The one who knew no English./ The one who tolerated/ my bad German. The poem is written in plain but powerful words (as one might actually write such a letter) and, as psychotherapists will tell us, it is a healthy thing to write a letter to a dead friend, particularly if there was no opportunity to say good-bye.

The challenge in writing about one’s own problems is that it takes skill and good judgment to make the reader care about the author’s sorrow. The trick is to give the poem some punch but avoid being sappy and sentimental. Swain does it well with another epistolary poem, “My Friend Phillip,” which broaches the theme of suicide. How bad/ could things have been,/ that a family’s love/ could not assuage?// …I was two hundred sixty one miles/ away.// …I would have come./ You only had to call.// I would have come.

One of my favorites in this collection is “Leonardo’s Lunchbox,” in which the author wryly speculates on the kind of midday meal the great philosopher, artist and inventor might have favored: I’m betting he was a/ bologna and cheese sort of fellow,/ no squishy formless egg salad/ for the master geometrician./ He would be drawn inexorably/ to the precisely circular/ slice of uniform pink meat.// …[and] a hard boiled egg,/ whose shape would have pleased him,/ and whose yolk-ensconcing allegorical qualities/ would have satisfied/ his most philosophical yearnings.

Similarly appealing is the delightful “Gravity,” in which the poet declares, I remain stuck on this ball/ like a gnat on flypaper./ …I sit,/ a prisoner of physics,/ bound tight as a stamp on a letter,/ centrifugal force be damned.Swain goes on to say that gravity . . .unerringly/ draws the buttered side of my toast/ to the linoleum. It is not simply that the poems about Leonardo and gravity are humorous, but these poems are original and contain some of Swain’s best imagery.

Credit: MSR Reviews – Richard Allen Taylor – Fall 2005

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